People will pay for just about anything that entertains them, it seems.

That is the takeaway from a dive into the world of professional online gamers in this week's edition of The New Yorker. Portland author and former WW reporter Taylor Clark hangs out with a bunch of indoorsmen and indoorswomen, who make big money catering to audiences on the streaming service called Twitch.

"Each month, a hundred million visitors watch their favorite personalities play video games on Twitch, spending an average of nearly two hours a day there," Clark writes. This audience is large enough to make the site one of the twenty most trafficked in the U.S."

"Kongphan, who is thirty-two, stands out amid Twitch's largely sallow, nondescript streamer base," Clark writes. "Lithe and tattooed, with an impeccably spiked crest of black hair, he is a former model and actor who once had a part on 'The Young and the Restless.' After struggling to break through in Hollywood, Kongphan saw a friend streaming and decided to try it. He spent years building an audience, delivering pizzas on the side. 'I will never do it again, but I streamed once for sixty-three and a half hours straight.'"